In 2016, exactly four years ago today, my first novel was published on Amazon. It was nerve-wracking. Honestly, I thought it was the beginning of the end of my writing days. Everyone will know I don’t have what it takes to make it as an author, ran through my head 24/7. This haunted me but I kept on writing.

I couldn’t imagine not writing. I’ve been writing books since I was ten years old. My first story, The Puppy Without A Tail, was born out of a childhood move. I went from being one of the most popular kids at my old school to being unknown at a new school. Okay, I wasn’t unknown. The first week of school a boy asked me if I was a virgin. Keep in mind I was in the fifth grade. “No, I am not a virgin,” I told the boy. I thought he was talking about the Virgin Mary. Being Catholic, I thought a virgin was a saint and I already knew I wasn’t a saint.

Suddenly, I was the popular girl at my new school. When a helpful sixth-grader explained to me what a virgin really was, I quickly denied that I was sexually active. The rabbits I raised for 4-H were sexually active. I was not. That was the end of my newfound popularity.

That first week at my new school was traumatizing. At my old school, a two-room schoolhouse out in the country, there were five girls and one boy in my fourth-grade class and we all loved each other. We’d grown up together.

Now at my new school starting my fifth-grade year, there were several classes of kids in each grade and most of them had grown up together. The school seemed so big. And I was the outsider. After the virgin incident, I felt like the puppy without a tail, the kid who wanted to fit in with the other puppies but didn’t.

Starting that new school was painful so I began to tell stories, not realizing I was telling stories to bleed out my pain. Writing was a release for me. So even if people found out I couldn’t write after publishing my first novel, I wasn’t going to stop. I couldn’t stop. Writing was my way of healing. The writing was therapy.

So how did I become a bestselling author on Amazon? My husband Scott began running ads on my books after my fourth novel was published. Not many advertisements, but good ones, like BookBub and Robin Reads and Fussy Librarian. Most books don’t sell if nobody knows they’re out there.

Ebooks tend to move best for authors on Amazon. I make .35 cents per book when Scott runs an ad. Do you know just one of our peaches sells for more than .35 cents? I certainly don’t write for the money. I had a person say to me recently, “What do you know about money problems? You’re a bestselling author now.”

I laughed. If I was paid by the hour, maybe I would earn a penny or two as a writer. At best, it takes six months for me to write a story. My new novel actually took twenty-five years if I count from start to finish. I have found writing novels is a lot of blood, sweat, and tears.

Hemingway said, “There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”

This summer my new novel Leaving Lonesome will release, and I’d love to have your help letting people know the book is coming out. I don’t have a release date yet, but as soon as I do, I will tell you. I have a few spots left on my launch team if you’d like to join. The purpose of a launch team is to tell the world about the book. You get the novel early and free on Kindle or a PDF file and you just need to leave an honest review on Goodreads and Amazon and tell others about the novel. Word of mouth is still the best way to help books fly off the shelves. Thank you so much! I couldn’t do this author thing without you. Love you, friends.